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| Retrofit offers results for Newspaper and Print Industry |
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| 6th, May 2009 |
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In the current economic climate, the newspaper and magazine printing industry faces more challenges than ever before, according to Mark Ashurst, Business Development Manager at Siemens Industry Automation & Drive Technologies. Mark discusses the issues faced by the industry and some of the tools needed to overcome these.
At the moment, this specific area of the printing industry is facing competition from a younger generation looking for quick news on the go. The daily read of a newspaper has been replaced for many by a podcast on the train or a lunch break surfing the web, meaning the attraction for newspapers is decreasing. Now, more than ever before, printers have to keep running costs as low as possible to remain competitive. This is also increasingly important when faced with decreasing advertising revenues.
For printers looking to maintain their competitive edge, the key factors to keeping costs down are to reduce wastage, increase productivity and maintain quality products. In these tough times, these may seem like hard goals to achieve but, ultimately, to maintain a healthy bottom line, increasing efficiencies can make a huge difference.
To meet such objectives with minimum capital investment, printers should look at maximising efficiencies on their existing machinery. With a lack of new capital to cover the cost of new machinery, printing companies should look to the tangible benefits offered by retrofit technology to improve their current systems.
The benefits of retrofit enhancements over the replacement of machinery in turn assist printers in achieving their goals. For instance, less downtime is experienced with the installation of a retrofit piece of technology rather than halting the entire press to replace an existing machine by installing a brand new one. Retrofitting ensures only minimum disruption is experienced, therefore allowing productivity to remain as high as possible.
Retrofitting also offers consistency of performance. For instance, a printing machine may be 10 years old and still have plenty of use left in it, however, the control system may be in urgent need of replacement to ensure it gives a repeatable consistency of quality of print. This reliability in performance of course also has a knock on effect to levels of wastage as the constancy of a quality print ensures there are less copies needing to be thrown out – enabling printers to keep costs low.
By reducing the mechanical components on site and gradually increasing the technology at a press, aiming to build a ‘shaftless solution’ where variable speed drives replace mechanical couplings, a printer can reduce its need for maintenance and risk of failure, cutting both costs and downtime, and again, allowing productivity to remain high. This ‘shaftless solution’ can be adopted over time by the introduction of retrofit products to replace aging mechanical systems.
For printers looking to ensure they maintain a competitive edge and striving to reduce wastage, cut downtime, increase productivity and ensure quality of print is consistent, then new innovations like Siemens’ SIMOTION Integrated register control offer practical advantages of improved performance, a reduction in the number of components as it is a ‘one-stop-shop’ solution, and the assurance of consistently high print quality. The SIMOTION Integrated register control can be adapted to any Simotion / Sinamics drive package, making it a convenient retrofit addition to any print works looking to improve its efficiency.
In summary, to remain competitive in an increasingly challenging industry, efficiency focussed printers should that look at making their existing machinery and assets work as hard as possible for minimal investment.
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